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littaum

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littaum last won the day on October 16 2023

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  1. I was thinking literally. "Bälle" sounds vaguely like ballet in English, and your game could be considered a dance of two balls. Not sure how to make it less naughty since everything is focused around two balls.
  2. Update: I've seen no bug reports and have not found any myself, so I've edited the first post to make "official" V1 complete binaries for Catch. The only difference between the Beta 2 binaries and the V1 complete binaries is that I've changed the title screen from "B2" to "V1". I had a slight alarm in testing the final version on my 7800 w/CRT when the "TV" icons for the CPU players on the title screen had a mushed in right hand side. I was thinking somehow I got my timings off between emulation and a live system. Turns out my CRT just had its contrast settings set to the maximum. Once it was set to a more reasonable level the graphics appeared normal.
  3. Official Atari T-shirts are only $20-something? The people creating the merch swag are not the same people making Atari consoles or Atari games. I also bought an official Atari T-shirt at PRGE 2023, so there are some of us who want this "merch table junk".
  4. To provide another example, in my games (in assembly), this is how I handle colors. I have a flag (NTSC or PAL60) where whichever format I want to activate I set to 1, and the other to 0 (assuming all of this is being compiled in DASM): ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;; Define constants ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; NTSC = 1 PAL60 = 0 Then, when I'm defining constants I have some IF statements that will define the colors according to a label (in this case DARK_GREEN_COLOR or RED_COLOR) IF NTSC DARK_GREEN_COLOR = #$D6 RED_COLOR = #$44 ENDIF IF PAL60 DARK_GREEN_COLOR = #$58 RED_COLOR = #$66 ENDIF Then in the actual code I use the associated label to set the colors. When it is compiled for NTSC it will use my NTSC colors, and when it uses PAL60 it will use PAL60 colors. lda #RED_COLOR sta COLUPF lda #DARK_GREEN_COLOR sta COLUP0 In some cases I want to have the color be set in a variable so that I can manipulate the color further. So I could have a memory (ds 1) variable named PlayerColor which I modify similar to the following: lda #RED_COLOR sta PlayerColor ... some other code here ... ; Modifies the color by subtracting 2 and storing it in the same variable lda PlayerColor sec sbc #2 ; (Will make for a slightly different color of red) sta PlayerColor ... some other code here .. ; Takes the final player color value and assigns it lda PlayerColor sta COLUP0
  5. At the moment people get their feedback by people posting in their game development threads, ala "nice game!", "I like this part of xxxxx", or else get the kind comments that ZPH or other streamers say when they play their game on their various streams. If you start adding quantitative ratings this early, any sort of negative feedback could potentially stop the game development and even possibly discourage the homebrew author from writing future games at all. The Atari-Age store ratings? Sure, those are physical releases and actual money is at stake. And physical release games have to jump through quite a few quality steps so it would be rare for a release game to be a very true stinker. At least for the 2600/7800 scene homebrew authors have a nice support and encouragement network, and I'd hate to have a "Yuck! 1 Star!" type system to judge people more harshly.
  6. Limiting awards to people who have not won before would definitely cheapen the honor of winning said award. And lots of people who never won an award still get featured by their nominations and playthrough. It's an honor simply to be nominated.
  7. Congratulations on your win for Best Atari 2600 Music + Sound (Original)! I still have the theme song in my head. Are you planning on doing a physical release for this game?
  8. I really doubt Microsoft will disable a PCs that already have an OS installed. To my knowledge this has never been done before. Sure, they will frequently install "updates" that basically just tell you your OS is obsolete, but I have yet to see a Microsoft update intentionally brick a PC (at least going back to the Windows NT era). That would cause outrage around the world. But it is getting to be a bigger pain in the butt to install newer Windows 11 OSs on systems that are not 100% in compliance. Some recent motherboards will allow for a fresh Windows 11 installation but are not elligible for the "auto Windows 10 to Windows 11 upgrade" that the newest PCs have available. Those that are looking for a cheap Windows PC to do firmware upgrades with, I'd heartily recommend a "renewed" Dell OptiPlex 7020 PC, available here for $174 and comes with Windows 10 Pro: https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Optiplex-Computer-Quad-Core-i7-4770-3-4GHz/dp/B07TWJCW6H/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3AELESWJN8B80&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.HJEDtEPlU3EzfmQSO01gb7dvgIGeAx1PZ2Qw61Lj1nAGupMGD_H-ccOcEQH2FonKDk_WaXO3QTVDHf69efE3O9G3Yxj7Iz3xkARy6FRZSFHHLcsbCRD-JH2CERoaNW0STtCkob5V_uhIEYIKqgSlSvVvGTx4QM9xKMG6xJXkGJj4Y9oDpd2evTAieX_ijNPU9-uZ40OCMgKdx7T5Con76xlJ1DqKaYOhkU-xY6Dztag.Ss3A11ugtkEUL1bvhkheue7JQ_8XykBYzHyifB1EKkw&dib_tag=se&keywords=dell+optiplex+7020&qid=1708967715&sprefix=dell+optiplex+7020%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-3
  9. The ZPH crew continues to outdo themselves every year. What a fantastic awards show! It really showcases the fantastic efforts homebrew authors are putting forth and is a great celebration of this growing genre across multiple platforms. And the showcase is one of the most polished efforts I've seen of its kind.
  10. There are windows programs that can show differences between ASCII files. I like DiffMerge: https://sourcegear.com/diffmerge/
  11. I believe Street Racer for the Atari 2600 used the playfield to create the obstacles for the player to avoid.
  12. It sounds like you have a preference for systems already. If pre-NES systems do not spark joy, I would suggest selling those off first. For me, the Atari 2600 sparks tremendous amounts of joy since that is the system I grew up with. When I amassed most of my collection back in the day from thrift storesI also collected for the Intellivision, Colecovision and Odyssey^2 since they were so plentiful as well. But I found myself never playing those other consoles and all they really did was take up space. So I sold them off. No regrets, as it helped me focus better on the Atari 2600 and even stated writing some games for it. As you mention, if you get an itch to play a particular game I find an emulator works well.
  13. Do you have any sort of 9 pin adapter cables so you are not plugging the joystick/keypad straight into the Atari? I am wondering if plugging in the keypad is causing some sort of electrical issue going straight into the Atari. When I developed my Keypad game, I had to do something similar as you are doing - select the game with the joystick, but when I unplug the joystick and plug in the keypad it was in effect pressing random buttons and auto-started the game. Once it was plugged in I had to use my own internal controls to migrate back to the opening menu. As Thomas alludes to, one possibility during development is to read the keypad from the 2nd controller port, so that you can leave the joystick plugged into the first port.
  14. I had good success following this thread to make a 8K bankswitched game:
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